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THE FINAL BULLET IN THE BODY OF THE MORE GUNS, LESS CRIME HYPOTHESIS
Author(s) -
III JOHN J. DONOHUE
Publication year - 2003
Publication title -
criminology and public policy
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.6
H-Index - 33
eISSN - 1745-9133
pISSN - 1538-6473
DOI - 10.1111/j.1745-9133.2003.tb00003.x
Subject(s) - law , criminology , gun control , crime control , political science , sociology , criminal justice
In 1997, John Lott and David Mustard launched what has come to be one of the most remarkable tales in the history of public policy evaluation when they announced that laws permitting citizens to carry concealed handguns - so-called right-to-carry (RTC) laws - caused crime to fall. Hailed as heroes by the National Rifle Association (NRA) and its supporters, while derided as scoundrels by their staunchest critics, Lott and Mustard precipitated a scholarly and political odyssey that can teach us much about the techniques and limitations of sophisticated empirical research and the divergent norms of the scholarly and political realms. The bottom line is that recent work by Kovandzic and Marvell confirms the growing consensus that the best evidence does not support the thesis that adoption of RTC laws reduces crime. Nonetheless, this now discredited thesis continues to influence public policy as John Lott continues to try to persuade state legislators that RTC laws will lower violent crime despite the great weight of the evidence to the contrary.